Road to the Oscars: Rounding Up the Oscars Ahead of Sunday Night’s Ceremony

The Oscars are this Sunday, March 10, and I’ve officially seen all 10 movies nominated for Best Picture now that I’ve finally seen Poor Things (which was magnificent, 99/100). Now that I’ve seen them all, I wanted to give you all a rundown of what’s going to win, what should win, and what was outright, insultingly snubbed.

So, before we get into what I think will win, I want to talk about a few of the biggest oversights of 2023. These are my Top 5 Oscar Snubs of this year.

5. Saltburn: Okay, look, I know that Saltburn hasn’t been the most popular movie, despite the fact that everyone seems to have seen it and talks about that disgusting bathtub scene. I don’t get why this movie is so disliked, though. It was a demented, dark comedy that was enthralling from start to finish. I’ve read reviews of it that claimed it was boring or had nothing to say, and I couldn’t disagree more. It’s an eat-the-rich fantasy, a commentary on class and toxic masculinity, and it has an outstanding performance from Barry Keoghan. I’m going to catch hell for saying this, but I think this movie deserved at least a few nominations.

4. Bradley Cooper for Best Director for Maestro: Maestro is unlikely to take home a ton of awards at this year’s Oscars, and that’s a damn shame. The movie was a delicately handled portrayal of a complicated relationship that somehow made a man cheating on his wife completely relatable and sympathetic. There was also very little queer content amongst this year’s Best Picture nominees, and Maestro stands as the queerest movie to be nominated.

Bradley Cooper managed to go down in history by becoming the fifth person ever to direct himself to a Best Actor nomination twice, the first time being for A Star is Born. (I mistakenly wrote in my review that he was the fifth person to direct himself to a Best Actor award in general, but that’s not true. His nomination marks the 20th time that has happened.) I find it perplexing that someone can direct themselves to a Best Actor award and not be nominated for Best Director as well.

3. All of Us Strangers: I got to see this movie as part of a special screening at the Denver Film Festival and had the pleasure of interviewing the director Andrew Haigh. This beautiful queer film was haunting and poignant. As someone who lost a parent at a relatively young age and lost the other one recently, the idea of getting to come out to the ghosts of your own parents stayed with me for a very long time.

Since I saw it, the movie has become a favorite in a lot of circles, especially amongst the LGBTQ+ community. It was nominated for and won a lot of film festival awards and was even nominated for six BAFTAs or British Academy Film Awards (essentially the British Oscars), including Outstanding British Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

There was a time where the BAFTAs were a pretty clear indicator for what was going to happen at the Oscars, but the BAFTAs have restructured how they choose nominees and winners in response to accusations of lack of diversity. The Oscars instituted some new diversity criteria recently, too, but it seems that it has given them different results than the BAFTAs.

2. Bottoms: The Academy is forever biased in favor of dramas. Comedies are sometimes nominated, but rarely win Best Picture, and the ones that do are somewhat debatable as to whether they count as comedies. Last year’s Best Picture win for Everything Everywhere All At Once was a bizarre fluke because the Academy hates giving awards to comedies, science fiction, or anything with a happy ending, and that movie was all three.

But the simple fact that Bottoms was nominated for absolutely nothing is a crime. For my money, it was the best movie of 2023 by miles. The writing was sharp, funny, and completely fresh. No other movie of 2023 was as smart, as clever, and as queer-friendly as Bottoms. The movie normalized queerness in a way rarely seen in Hollywood, and it completely destroyed all narrative expectations. I realize convincing the Academy to give it a Best Picture award would be like asking capitalists to give up producing greenhouse gasses, but the fact that it didn’t at least get a nomination for Best Original Screenplay—a category that’s often the consolation prize for great comedies—is astounding.

1.Greta Gerwig for Best Director for Barbie: When the nominations were first announced, the initial reaction was outrage that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig weren’t nominated while Ryan Gosling was. Then the blowback came as people pointed out that America Ferrera was, in fact, nominated for Barbie and that people were ignoring the fact that Lily Gladstone was likely to become the first Native American woman to win Best Actress. Thus, people who complained about Gerwig and Robbie’s snubs were accused of “basic white feminism.”

First of all, I would disagree with you that Barbie represents basic white feminism. Not only does it have a racially diverse cast with BIPOC women in important roles of power in Barbieland, but also, when you say “basic white feminism,” I think of TERFs, and Barbie took a huge chance in casting one of the Babies with a trans woman. Secondly, you can celebrate Gladstone’s nomination and potential win while also being disappointed for Robbie. I’m not even saying Robbie deserved the win, but she deserved the nomination.

But most importantly, what Greta Gerwig pulled off with this movie was an absolute miracle. She made a wildly feminist—and pro-trans—film with a major studio and Mattel’s money. How she managed to accomplish that is beyond me. The film industry must have been incredibly hostile to her vision, and I don’t even understand how she was allowed to make the movie she wanted to make. And yes, I believe that the challenges of navigating the studio system should be part of what we consider when we call someone “Best Director.”

And I can tell you exactly which director I would knock out of the five that were nominated so that Gerwig could have been nominated instead: Martin Scorsese. Besides the fact that Killers of the Flower Moon was, in my opinion, the weakest film nominated, there’s also the fact that Scorsese faced the exact opposite experience of what Gerwig faced making her movie. Scorsese is a white male director with a ton of clout in Hollywood. It didn’t matter that he was making a movie about Native Americans; Scorsese can get whatever movie he wants made with whatever budget he needs. The fact that nobody stopped him from releasing a three and a half hour movie is evidence that nobody is ever going to stop Scorsese from doing exactly what he wants to do.

Next up, let’s round up all the major categories, with all the movies I expect to win (mostly based on the Vegas odds as reported by VegasInsider.com) and the ones I think deserve the win.

Category: Best Adapted Screenplay
Who I Think Will Win: American Fiction
Who I Think Should Win: Poor Things

Like I said, screenplay awards are often used as consolation prizes, especially for comedies that the Academy would never dream of giving the Best Picture Award to. In that sense, it makes sense that American Fiction is favored to win in this category. That being said, while I enjoyed American Fiction, I’ve always argued that it’s basically Spike Lee’s Bamboozled remade as a comedy instead of a tragedy. Poor Things, on the other hand, was a radically original comedy that bore few similarities to anything else. I just found it to be a better script, and far more memorable. And since Poor Things is equally unlikely to win Best Picture, I’d give this to Poor Things if it were up to me.

Category: Best Original Screenplay
Who I Think Will Win: Anatomy of a Fall
Who I Think Should Win: The Holdovers

While Anatomy of a Fall was good, it was a bit dry, like trying to finish a piece of turkey without the gravy. (I can’t believe my vegan ass just made a meat-based simile.) It looks poised to win, but I don’t entirely understand why. For me, The Holdovers had the best character arcs of any film nominated. And, like I said, screenplay awards have a tendency to go to comedies, which would make The Holdovers a more appropriate winner than the cold, harsh drama of Anatomy.

Category: Best Director
Who I Think Will Win: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer
Who I Think Should Win: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

Sometimes, the Academy gives someone an award that’s really an honorary award recognizing the entirety of their career rather than for what they were officially nominated for. This happened when Scorsese finally won his Best Director award for the weak film The Departed. Luckily, Christopher Nolan has both an outstanding body of work and is being nominated for a film that deserves to be the one he finally wins for. Nolan is a solid lock on this one, and there’s almost no chance of anyone upsetting him. I think it’s well deserved. That being said, had Gerwig gotten the nomination she deserves, I’d happily wish Nolan better luck next year.

Category: Best Supporting Actress
Who I Think Will Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers
Who I Think Should Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers

Da’Vine Joy Randolph first came to my attention in the role of Cherise in the outstanding Hulu adaptation of one of my favorite novels, High Fidelity. She was funny and vulnerable in a role that had been played before—rather one-dimensionally—by Jack Black. The second season of the show was supposed to focus on her character even more than the first one did, and it’s a shame it got cancelled before that could happen. To see her go on to win an Oscar makes me feel like she finally got what she deserved because Randolph is an outstanding actor. In The Holdovers, her character was one of the most heartbreaking in the whole film, and Randolph pulled it off phenomenally. So I’ll be perfectly happy to see her win this one.

Category: Best Supporting Actor
Who I Think Will Win: Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer
Who I Think Should Win: Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer

I’ve seen this category described as having a lot of great talent in it, and honestly, I don’t see that. Ryan Gosling pretty much said he didn’t want to win the award; Robert De Niro was underwhelming in Killers of the Flower Moon; Mark Ruffalo was fine in Poor Things but hardly a standout performance, and I honestly can’t remember who Sterling K. Brown played in American Fiction. So, while Robert Downey Jr. was great in Oppenheimer and certainly deserves the award, I don’t really think he had the greatest competition to go up against.

Category: Best Actress
Who I Think Will Win: Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon
Who I Think Should Win: Emma Stone for Poor Things

This is probably the closest race in the entire ceremony, with nobody really certain whether Gladstone or Stone will win this one. I realize that Gladstone is likely to break a record for this year, according to USBets.com, for being the first Native American to win any competitive award at the Oscars, which I’m very glad is happening, but I think Stone put in the better performance this year.

Gladstone did her best with a flabby, overly long script that should have been made into a miniseries and playing off two men giving fairly unconvincing performances. But I feel like all the flaws with the movie—none of which were Gladstone’s fault—made her performance less impressive.

Meanwhile, Stone played a wholly unique creature that was almost completely alien to the human race, and she played the role remarkably well, making for the more impressive performance. I realize that, if she wins, there will be a lot of people tweeting #OscarsSoWhite (and, yes, the Oscars are overly white at times), but I think Stone deserves this one more. USBets.com also points out that Stone winning the Oscar would place her in an elite category of 27 actresses to win two or more acting Oscars, having already won for 2019’s La La Land.

Category: Best Actor
Who I Think Will Win: Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers
Who I Think Should Win: Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers

I keep bringing up Vegas odds because they’re an interesting indicator of who’s trying to win. I’m not trying to encourage anyone to gamble, per se. That being said, the Vegas odds favor Cillian Murphy, so I think someone could potentially make a good chunk of change off of betting on Giamatti for the upset, which I think he’s going to pull off.

Giamatti has a long career of great roles that he deserves a win for, and seeing him reunited with the director of one of his first great hits, Sideways, makes him a pretty good candidate for the award.

Cillian Murphy was great in Oppenheimer, but when you factor in both actors’ full body of film work—which probably shouldn’t come into play in the Oscars, but often does—Murphy has a history of popcorn movies and action flicks, while Giamatti is known for meaty roles with a lot of depth. (And also a few silly duds like Fred Claus). In many ways, Oppenheimer is Murphy’s transition into the kind of acting that the Academy actually rewards, whereas Giamatti has been doing that kind of acting for ages. I think Giamatti pulls this one off.

Category: Best Picture
Who I Think Will Win: Oppenheimer
Who I Think Should Win: The Holdovers or Poor Things

Oppenheimer was a great film that deserves its place in the sun, but I thought The Holdovers and Poor Things both had superior character arcs, which is what I look for in a movie. Then again, it’s a pretty packed field. While I didn’t entirely love Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, and Past Lives, I adored The Holdovers, American Fiction, Poor Things, Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Maestro. Zone of Interest was incredible, too, but it seems weird to say that I “adored” a movie about a concentration camp. There’s a lot of films that deserve praise this year, and Oppenheimer is definitely one of them, so I’m not upset about it winning.

The Oscars air on Sunday, March 10 on ABC.

Photo courtesy of Disney/Mark Seliger